I apologize for the overlong delay
in response to your letter of November 20th, '90. While moving, I severely
twisted my back. There was no improvement after four months, so a lumbar X-Ray
was taken indicating a healing fracture. This has improved over three months
to the point of where I could submit to prostate surgery and that was done
on February 1st. Yesterday, I returned to normal functioning. I feel better
than I have in several years and am enjoying getting back to work.

About all the help I can give
you on any changes in the text of The Urantia BOOK including punctuation,
"typos", changes in digits, and textural changes are those of my own experience.
As I told you, prior to publication, Forum members, engaged in reading the
first proof sheets made from the original metallic plates, were constantly
seeking primarily for typographical errors including punctuation, errors of
grammar, syntax, or any other errors which could occur in the process of the
transference of a text from manuscript through the linotype procedure into
metal printing plates.

Apparently, the most potent source
of error would lie at the point of the linotype operator. Dealing with a complicated
text did not simplify matters, at least in my opinion. It is my belief that
some of the "typos" were carried over into the first printing. I had only
one experience with a textual change being made between printings. I told
you about this during your visit in Pensacola. This was due to the diligence
of a high school science teacher who had a B.S. in science and had read in
a scientific journal that a specific figure given in The Urantia Book expressing
the relationship between the mass of the nucleus and the planetary electron
in the hydrogen atom had changed by one digit. He was able to persuade the
people at 533 to change it in the second printing. At that time I had moved
to Wisconsin and the chap instituting the change had followed me as president
of the Brotherhood.

Quite by accident, the change
was pointed out to me by a young woman student who was incensed at obvious
tampering with what she firmly and correctly believed should be left alone
by human hands. I raised quite a ruckus about the matter and it was returned
to its original status in the very next printing. Since that move, with the
exception of 1973-1975, I have not resided in Chicago and have not been informed
of any other apparent discrepancies between printings until your letter of
Nov. 20th. I am taking up this matter with the Foundation immediately.

You have asked the exactly correct
question about the original type setting which appears to be involved in some
of these events. The original printing plates for the U.B. were made by the
old linotype-mold-casting technique. In the twelve-year interval between the
first and second printings new photographic techniques and higher speed presses
had rendered the original plates obsolete and new plates had to be produced.
As the original plates were planned to yield one million impressions, this
was quite a blow.

It is quite possible, despite
what was thought to be close supervision, that errors were introduced at this
point. You know from your own writing experience how difficult a proof reading
task is involved in a text of over one million words. It looks like we need
to carefully proof read the present printing against the first printing. In
my opinion, there can be only one edition of the U.B., the first. I am very
glad to receive your comments and appreciate your confidence very much.

In regard to comments about the
introduction and summary I find no fault with them. I would suggest that you
give some thought toward some emphasis on the fact that we all can see a new
work only through the eyes of our own partial knowledge and experience; our
worldview or hypothesis, our weltanschauung. This immediately forces us to
see a new work through dark glasses. We also place far too much significance
on the works of others talking about the same thing, particularly in the areas
of philosophy and religion about which A.N. Whitehead quipped: "The safest
general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it
consists of a series of footnotes to Plato."

Jesus was more serious than we
realize when he said: "You must become as little children." This is particularly
true of our approach to the U.B. The fact that it continually reiterates,
'religion is a purely human experience of experiencing a relationship with
God' should promptly eliminate our tendency to compare the U.B. with known
theological thought except as the latter may provide some means to insight
but never explanation.

At a recent group meeting in Atlanta,
one of the members brought out a bible to compare with the U.B. I interrupted
to ask: "Do you compare The Urantia Book to the Bible or the Bible to The
Urantia Book, or do you see each as an independent work discussing at times
the same events?"

I see science with a different
viewpoint. My own early training in Chemistry and Physics showed me that science
is an ongoing process and to dogmatize it at any point is to fossilize at
that point.

Now that I am beginning to return
to the things that I wish to do, I will honestly try to be a better correspondent.
Please give my best wishes to that gal from your area who wrote me. I have
not answered her, and can't remember her name. It will be a great pleasure
to hear from both of you again.